


an odyssey of sorts

by infinitebees



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 00:39:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11116263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infinitebees/pseuds/infinitebees
Summary: hawke returns from the fade to find a world that's quickly changing. she just wants to find isabela.or: a reunion tour.





	an odyssey of sorts

(this is what it’s like to cheat death:

you’re laying at the bottom of a well all broken and just barely able to see the light coming from above, and you don’t know how you got there and nothing feels connected to you – not your arms, your feet, your heart still beating falteringly in your chest. your soul is ripped from your body and you’re looking yourself in the face, your eyes are the same and finally you see yourself the way your mother must have seen you the day you were born, soft and unguarded and new to the world, and you reach out to touch your soul and then –

and then it slams back into you with a force that would shatter your bones if you had any bones to break.

and then you are awake, sort of, and it feels like all of time and space is slipping through your fingers like sand, and suddenly there’s your life playing behind your eyes, everyone you loved as a child, all at once: your father’s proud smile; your sister’s laughter as she holds a flame between her hands; your brother, dancing for you after you broke your arm falling off the roof. and your mother, always there, always with that look in her eyes like she’s waiting for you to become somebody else. _look ma,_ you want to say. _i did it._

the world splinters into you, and the verdant tides of time throw you ashore.)

Hawke lands at the feet of an elven man, who lets his surprise show only for a moment before he smiles gently and holds his hand out to her. “Welcome to the world of the living, little flame.”

 

-

 

“I know you,” Hawke says to the elf some time later. She’s leaning against the trunk of a tree, still unable to stand properly since having left the Fade. She’s hoping she’ll get her feet back sometime soon, but in the meantime she’s content to drink the water given to her, eat the bread offered even though she can’t stop thinking about how strange food tastes in her mouth after what feels like an Age subsisting on dead dreams.

He only smiles inscrutably at her, the way he has at all her questions since he sat her down after her escape from the Fade. It’s rapidly becoming frustrating. “Do you, now?”

“You were with the Inquisitor. At Skyhold, before…” Hawke waves her hand vaguely in the air. “You know.” Something’s whispering at the back of her head, though, the silhouette of a bald man with pointed ears wandering over the jagged rocks that litter the ground of the Fade; always just beyond her reach – and yet somehow Hawke had always gotten the feeling that he could hear her when she called out. “And after that, when I was trapped, you were…”

“Terasyl’an Te’las,” the elf interrupts.

“Uh. Sorry?”

“That is the true name of the fortress.” He isn’t looking at her anymore; now he gazes upwards, through the canopy of the forest and into the blue of the sky. “’Where the sky was held back.’ Did no one ever wonder about the name? Of what could have happened there to warrant such a title? They know now, I suppose.” The elf – Solas, he’s called, the name rising in her throat, but it stays trapped there as though if she were to say it it would cease to be a name at all – sighs and, as if just remembering Hawke’s presence, glances sidelong at her. “Glad to see you remember me, although perhaps by a different name. There are those who call me Fen’Harel now, and they would be correct in doing so.”

Hawke blinks slowly at him, thinks back to all the stories Merrill used to tell her about Fen’Harel, the Dread Wolf, the trickster god who trapped the rest of the pantheon in a place beyond the mortal realm. She wants to laugh it off, but there’s a sudden chill in the air and the wind is rustling through the leaves like soft whispers, so instead she shoves the rest of her bread into her mouth and nods at him.

After a time she asks, “Where are we?”

“The Brecilian Forest,” Solas — Fen’Harel — replies. When this is met with a blank stare, as Hawke tries to remember where exactly that is (and she can’t blame herself, she doesn’t even know how long she’s been gone), he adds: “You’re in Ferelden. I believe we are in the northern part of these woods, which means you are near Denerim. You’ve a long way to go before you reach Kirkwall, which I expect you must want to do.”

Hawke nods to herself and stares at the ground. She _does_ want — _need_ — to go back to Kirkwall, to find Bethany if she can, and Isabela, but — “Only if… did Vita…?”

Something like pain flashes across the elf’s face. “She did, yes.”

“So we’re safe.”

“If by that you mean that Corypheus is no longer a threat,” Solas replies, “then yes. You are. Some months after Adamant the Inquisitor fought off the magister. Where he is now… Well, I suppose he is where you were. To be perfectly honest I am surprised to see you here.”

Hawke laughs drily. “Yeah. Me too. I’m still not even really sure how I got here. It’s like, the more I try to remember…”

(the more you try to remember the more it feels like… well, like a dream. a dream you wake from with a start without knowing why — you try to think what so frightened you, but the details are slipping away from you. the more desperately you grasp at the dream the hazier the faces get, the more smoke-like the feelings you had then. there was an endless green light, bright yet soft like moss on an old tree. there was a man — a demon — _choice. spirit_. — with a smile like a knife and bright eyes that seemed to pierce right through you and the words “we can help each other” echoing in the space around you. you said no, you know you did, and yet everything stops after that. or everything _starts_ — the well and the shattering and your entire life going on so close you could reach out and touch it; the rough wave that thrust you ashore; the man looking at you now, infuriatingly inscrutable and more intimidating with each passing moment. you take a breath to steady yourself and —)

“You had some help,” Solas says.

“Oh,” says Hawke. “That makes sense. I guess.”

 

-

 

They walk together, for some time. Hawke doesn’t know where Solas could be going, but eventually they part ways and Hawke — tired, hungry, alone — makes her way to Denerim, and to Highever from there. On the boat to Kirkwall, she dreams.

(when he looks into your eyes you forget, for a moment, who he is. then the words come out before you know they’re even forming on your tongue: “carver? is that you?”

he smiles, and around you your home in lothering suddenly materializes. “aithne,” he says, and you feel sorrow run through you like a shiver; you haven’t heard that name in such a long time, not since the last time you saw isabela. “you look different.”

you look down at yourself, at your hands. they are smooth, sunless pale, without callouses, utterly unfamiliar. then you stop looking at yourself at all, unable to bear the sight. it’s you, and it’s not you. it’s who you were before malcolm died, before leandra grew colder, before suddenly you were the center of their world, carver and bethany and your mother. another life, another hawke. you feel, look, _are_ younger. years ago you might have enjoyed such a dream, but now you only feel the panic that lately comes with being in the fade again.

“carver,” you say again, the name feeling odd on your lips. a taste you’d forgotten, like leandra’s lavender bread. “is that _really_ you?”

he looks annoyed, at that. then he seems to have to think about it, and for a moment panic flashes across his face. that much, at least, you can understand. “i suppose it is,” he says after a time. “and it isn’t. i don’t know, really. i was asleep, and then… something happened, i don’t know what. things are different now, here, where i am.”

“different how?”

“i feel alive again. i didn’t before, and i do now. it’s…” he laughs, and then stops and looks back up at you. “why are we even talking about this? i haven’t seen you in ages, and here you are and here i am and…” he seems to be losing focus. “i feel older, aithne. things are changing. you told me that, remember, when we were leaving lothering?”

you remember. the smoke on the air, the muted panic in everybody’s movements. leliana, praying beside bethany before you all fled. your mother, snapping at all of you every time something went wrong. “she doesn’t know how else to cope,” you’d told bethany. it didn’t do anything to stop her from getting just as anxious. only carver could, with his ridiculous little dance that couldn’t fail to amuse you all even then.

“sometimes,” he continues, “sometimes i wake up and i can feel my own skin again. like there’s some kind of barrier that’s slipping away.” he reaches out and touches you and you feel it, heat, human, _living_ heat on your arm. “see?” he says. “it’s happening again…”)

Hawke wakes with a start as she hears the ghost of Carver’s voice, so close by before it fades away again. 

She doesn’t sleep much, after that. Can’t, for fear that she’ll wake in the Fade again and find that her return to the world had been the dream all along.

 

-

 

Varric is the first she finds, predictably. That much had felt inevitable as Hawke had crossed the sea on that big boat; they find each other, always, simple as that. And anyway it’s not as though the Viscount of Kirkwall can stray far from the city. He’d just become Viscount, actually, before things all went to shit. At that time he’d seemed uncertain, but excited nonetheless. He’d had plans — Varric always has plans — but he hadn’t been sure how to slip into his role. Legitimacy wasn’t really something familiar to Varric, after all. Now, though, he seems more at home in it. Kirkwall is doing quite well, actually, the weird atmosphere in the air notwithstanding. That, Hawke is quickly finding, is for once not unique to Kirkwall. (Everyone’s noticed it, but nobody wants to acknowledge it. The strange dreams, the feeling that there’s a ghost rustling about somewhere out of sight. Carver had been right — things are different.)

The moment he sees her it seems that time stops. Hawke cringes internally at the thought which may as well have come from one of Varric’s shitty novels, but it’s true; the air around her suddenly feels still as his gaze falls upon her, as he rises from his desk, as he tries to make his mouth say “Hawke?” but can only get half the name out before it fizzles out on his tongue. 

“Miss me?” she tries with a crooked smile that she thought she’d forgotten how to make.

An hour later they are seated beside each other, whiskey in hand and trading stories like nothing’s happened. Or, not exactly — Varric has a lot more to say, a lot more to catch Hawke up on. There are explanations to be made, of course: Varric wants to know how the _fuck_ she not only went physically into the Fade, but, more pressingly, how she got _out_. He startles at the mention of Solas. He wants to know where he’s gone — apparently he’s been more trouble than Hawke could have expected — and is chagrined when she has no answers for him. From him he learns that Merrill is still in the Kirkwall alienage; Anders is still in Maker-knows-where; Fenris is somewhere in Tevinter, unless he’s finished his business there and moved on elsewhere (it’s been a while since last he’s written, Varric tells her, but he could probably track him down); Isabela still reigns over The Tempest, proud and undefeated and wild as ever. Last Varric heard she was courting Antiva.

“Doesn’t sound so bad,” says Hawke, leaning back and draining the rest of her drink. “Always wanted to see Antiva City.”

Varric only laughs, and refills her glass. “You say that now, but let me know what you think of the smell.”

“Oi, not like you’ve ever been! Unless…” Hawke frowns. “You haven’t snuck off there while I was off in the green place, have you?”

“No, no, just heard enough about the place from people who’ve been.”

“Ah,” says Hawke. “Well, maybe you can add my testimony soon. Bet I’ve been in worse-smelling places.”

“I don’t take losing bets, kid,” Varric chuckles. And then they go on talking like that, till all the words are gone from them. (It won’t last long — with Varric, there’s always something to talk about.) Tonight is dreamless, when at last she drifts off to sleep. It won’t occur to her till much later in the day to be grateful for the fact.

When morning comes, Hawke finds herself with a pounding headache and a sleeping dwarf leaning heavily on her shoulder. _Just like old times, then_ , and there’s a wry grin pulling at her lips as she lets Varric sleep on.

 

-

 

It’s worst in the alienage. That’s what Hawke finds when she seeks out Merrill later in the week. There’s a faint outline around everything there, as though there’s another alienage hovering round the edges, threatening to overlap onto this one. People talk about noises in the night, the voices of residents long dead circling round the Vhenadahl in an odd sort of singsong no one can decipher. Hawke herself feels different, stepping in there, like she’s falling into that other world. Like she might just slip right through if she isn’t careful. It scares her, the feeling. She’s reminded of every time she’s almost stumbled and tripped over something precarious.

The thought leaves her head when she sees Merrill’s familiar big, green eyes staring at her from a couple yards away, and then suddenly she’s barreling into her and Hawke just barely manages to catch her before she knocks them both to the ground (there’s a moment in there where Merrill’s hands briefly seem to go _through_ her; Hawke tries desperately to ignore it). Merrill is beaming up at her with a breathless “You’re _alive!_ ” and Hawke is smiling back down, and they’re clutching at each other as though to make sure the other is real, is solid, is actually here. 

She stays the night, because she’s never been able to say no to Merrill. Merrill makes dinner — even now it strikes Hawke how surreal it is to be eating real, actual food — and for a second time, Hawke regales another friend with the tale of her escape from the Fade. Merrill scowls at the mere mention of Solas — Fen’Harel — which tells Hawke that she’s already heard whatever it is Varric’s had to say on the matter (really she’s sad to have missed all of this; dramatic reveals are _right_ up her alley, but she had to go and get herself stuck in an entirely different plane of existence. Typical Hawke). 

Things fall back into normalcy quickly enough. Merrill fusses over Hawke, Hawke pretends that she isn’t, in her own way, fussing over Merrill (she worries, of course, she always worries. She trusts Merrill, of course she does, but her father’s warnings about blood magic will probably never leave her head, and old habits _do_ die hard, even for someone as ungrounded as Hawke), they talk and they laugh and eventually they settle in for bed.

“You’re different,” Merrill says then. Her eyes are glittering in the dark, and Hawke really doesn’t think she’ll ever get used to that.

Hawke makes her lips turn up into a grin, trying to ignore the lurch of panic that she feels at Merrill’s words. “Am I, now? I do suppose a year in the Fade will do that to someone.

“Surely you’ve noticed, Hawke.” She fixes the other with a sharp look. Hawke sobers her expression appropriately; she knows better by now than to try to lighten anything Merrill says when she gets that serious tone. “This _place_ is changed. So many of the elves are suddenly… well, they didn’t have magic before, and they do now. And I can’t take them to the Circle, I just couldn’t ever _do_ that to them, but — they’re all like children just getting their magic, and sooner or later one’s bound to make some sort of beginner’s mistake.” Hawke knows what she means; when Bethany had been six she’d nearly set fire to the house by accident during an argument about vegetables, of all things, and they’d almost had to flee except Malcolm had managed to convince their neighbors it had just been a cooking mishap.

“And now,” Merrill continues, “I can feel it on you, too. Only it’s different. You… I don’t know how to explain it. You just feel _green_.”

And Hawke can’t sleep at all that night, haunted by the green and by the song of the dead. She suddenly finds she can understand the words, even if no one else can, and she doesn’t like what they say.

 

-

 

They’ve rebuilt the Circle, just like Merrill had said. It’s not run the way they used to be, though, owing to Divine Victoria’s decree ( _that_ , more than anything, makes Hawke wish she hadn’t been away for as long as she had. It must have been something to see, after all). Ostensibly it functions more like a school now, and the Templars now work from a separate building. Apparently it had finally been understood that a relaxed Templar presence was conducive to a better learning environment, and to people not being constantly on-edge.

Hawke shows up unannounced because of course she does, so she’s surprised when Bethany doesn’t seem the least bit alarmed by her appearance. 

“Carver did say you’d be round eventually,” Bethany says by way of explanation, once they’ve finished crying into each other’s shoulders. When that’s met with an incredulous expression from Hawke, she adds, “He did tell you things were different. And we’re twins, after all. Of course we talk.”

Out of everyone she’s talked to so far, Bethany is remarkably serene about the whole thing. She seems to have aged more than the years let on since Hawke’s been gone; her quiet wisdom feels more unsettling than it ever did before, even as it seems completely natural on her. 

“It’s hard not to notice what’s going on when you wake up in a building full of mages every day,” Bethany explains over dinner later that evening. Around them, mages chatter idly as they pick at their own food and debate everything from the virtues of fire magic over ice, to whether or not the cafeteria ought to bring back the lamb sandwiches they used to make. It’s a striking change from the way things were before, and Hawke feels pride rise in her chest to think that Bethany was a part of making it this way; she teaches now, and it suits her so well Hawke can’t believe she ever did anything else. “It’s the Veil; it’s thinning. Might not be there at all, pretty soon.”

“What’s that mean for all of us?” Hawke asks, only half wanting to know the answer.

But Bethany only shrugs. “For now, it means I can see Carver again. The real Carver, not just the brother that the Fade used to build up for me in my dreams. It also means we’re seeing more mages.” She’d been grinning, but suddenly her expression sobers. “It’s all terribly fascinating, of course, but it doesn’t bode well for the way of things as they are. I don’t know what will happen once the Veil is gone for good, but whatever does happen… It’s all going to be different, Aithne.”

“I’ve been hearing that a lot lately,” Hawke mutters into her cup with a grim smile.

They finish eating, Bethany gives her a tour of the new Circle, and by the time the sun is well and truly gone for the night they’re getting ready to say their goodbyes. Hawke had offered to stay longer, had actually wanted to, but Bethany’s always known her best out of the family and she knows that Hawke’s already anxious to move on. She loves Kirkwall, of course; she’d come to think of it as home, before things all went to shit and they all had to part ways. But it isn’t home anymore without them all here together; it’s just echoes of what she’d had before. Everyone’s grown and changed, even her. Especially her. And now there’s a restlessness in her different from the kind she’d been born with; one that whispers to her when she’s awake and draws her toward itself when she’s asleep. She’s afraid that if she stays still for too long it’ll have her again, and she’ll be right back to that endless expanse of green, of timelessness.

“Where will you go next?” Bethany asks her, meaning, “Where’s Isabela now?”

“Thought I might see what Antiva’s like this time of year,” Hawke replies breezily. “I’ll be sure to write, of course.”

“And give Isabela my love.”

Hawke grins and waggles her eyebrows. “Sure thing, once I’ve finished giving her mine.” That elicits an exasperated groan from Bethany and for a second it feels as though nothing’s really changed at all. Then they’re hugging each other again, trying very hard not to cry, and as Hawke watches her form disappear into the shadow of the Circle tower she doesn’t think she’s ever felt so proud of anyone in her life.

 

-

 

(you’ve been here before, is your first thought when you open your eyes. and now you’re here again, even though just a moment ago you’d been sitting in a circle of other travelers, telling tales as the sea rocked beneath you. but yes, you’ve been here and you’re here again, the spot where the nightmare demon had found you all. where you’d killed it, or at least you _think_ you’d killed it. the longer you’re away from this place the less you remember about it. probably a blessing, really, but right now it scares you because it means you don’t know where to go from here.

you still hear idle chatter and you realize that the people you were with, they’re still there. they’re here, and they’re not. you can see their faint outlines, the gesture of a hand here, the nod of a head there. echoes of laughter. then silence, when you see them all turn to where you are. or were. then they flicker out, and you’re alone.

alone again. you stretch your arm out in front of you in search of your hand, and where your hand should be there’s just _time_. that’s the only way you can put it: when you look at yourself you don’t see you, but everything that’s ever happened to you. everything that ever will. and then —)

And then Hawke is sitting again in that same circle, and the people around her have stopped talking entirely. The girl beside her jumps when Hawke comes back to herself, tries to scream but can’t quite manage it.

“Now what the fuck was that?” asks the man to her right. For once, Hawke has nothing to say.

_Everything’s changing_ , says a familiar voice in her ear. No one else seems to notice.

 

-

 

Here, though: here’s home. It’s in the bend of Isabela’s arm; the warmth in her laugh and the way it reaches her eyes, shines _through_ her eyes; the contented, half-reverent little sigh she gives just after she comes (they don’t leave The Tempest for two days, Hawke’s desire to see Antiva be damned); the sound of Hawke’s name on her mouth, like it’s a secret (or a prayer). Hawke’s fears fall away for a while as Isabela becomes the center again, the way she used to be, the way she _should_ be. 

Isabela says “I missed you” for the first time three days later, as they lay curled around one another in some inn or other (well, a brothel to be more accurate, but Hawke’s trying for romance here). Their limbs are tangled, sleep-warm, and their breaths are quiet in the midday air of the room. Hawke’s woken from the deepest sleep she’s ever had some hours ago, and ever since they’ve just been enjoying the peace, taking each other in.

“Yeah,” Hawke murmurs into the crook of the pirate’s neck. “Me too. More than I can say.” She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “When they left me there… when I thought I was going to die I could only think that I never got to say a proper goodbye.That was what scared me most, that I couldn’t ever tell you I loved you again.”

Isabela hums, presses a kiss to the crown of Hawke’s head. “You’ve got all the time to say it now, sweet thing. Say it as many times as you like.”

Hawke does. She says it till she’s out of breath, and then she tries to say it some more but she’s stopped by the laughing slant of Isabela’s mouth over her own. Then it all fades into softness, into gentle sighs and warm, wandering hands.

**Author's Note:**

> hey kiddies this is very rough and very sloppy but im very fond of it nonetheless. ill probably revisit it at some point, maybe toy with what's going on with the veil; it ties in to what ive got going on with my warden, after all.


End file.
